To be honest, the only time I've ever seen anything KNC in person was the one day we visited MinerSource in January 2014 to talk about PSU boards. I didn't realize until about half an hour before that we were in the same town and that was during the big move to Colorado but there were still a few miners on site. I don't really know anything about anything KNC has made. Except that the Neptune will kill you in your sleep, but then everyone knows that.
If you buy an S5 off eBay, you should probably mine on it. If you buy one that doesn't work, make sure you don't pay a lot because it doesn't work. Or you could buy a pod directly? I dunno. Do the math and see what pops out.
I'll probably hole the board for LGA1175 coolers. I believe that's what the few HEX4M actually delivered used, which is why there are hundreds of unused coolers in my shop that I've asked about purchasing for this project. Also seems like something fairly standard/common and easy to get parts for. A clip-on cooler for 1-2 chips doesn't make much sense unless your cooler is awkwardly tiny, because top-clock performance on the BM1384 is 10-12W per chip so you probably aren't remembering the max power draw correctly.
yeah the knc comment was just to get you riled up ..you would hate me forever
ok still unclear on what I'll need for any of this i will wait for it to firm up some etc (ie lurk)
ie likely i'd have to 'tweak' my way into being one of the 1st 50 pods you have stuff for I guess (if i am following this correctly on this thread)
keep up the good work